The Wake

Orford and Holmes wrote Corners and Headlong on trips between London and Southampton, Widow's Peak had already been recorded for a session on BBC Radio One's Friday Rock Show, and The Magic Roundabout took its name from Esau comparing one section to the children's TV theme. Nicholls said the main theme was death, which preoccupied him at the time; the central character dies at the end of Outer Limits and the album follows his soul, with Edgar Allan Poe's The Premature Burial as an early spark. Holmes, the main producer, has said the band read the ending differently. Because the sound was bigger and more polished, Nicholls felt the record needed a full-colour cover, and he designed and illustrated it himself.

It reached No. 72 on the UK albums chart for one week, the band's only entry, and Holmes recalled it reaching No. 3 on the Melody Maker indie chart. AllMusic gave it four and a half stars, and Background Magazine's Henri Strik has called it a true masterpiece. Nicholls said in 2018 that it captures where IQ was in 1985, though he would like to re-record his vocals. A 2010 anniversary box added demos, outtakes, the BBC session and film of a 1984 show in Watford. A poster of the album is thought to hang behind Thom Yorke in an early photograph of Radiohead.